


If You Give Me Your Hand I'll Hold It

by hariboo



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canon character deaths, F/M, Post Film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:56:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/pseuds/hariboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako grew up enjoying the Christmas season. It was a time for family. She learns from Raleigh his memories aren’t quite like her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Give Me Your Hand I'll Hold It

**Author's Note:**

> advent calendar fic for @sweetbitter/rouguedemonhunter on LJ/tumblr! Unbeta'd and probably not the best use of the prompt, sorry! :(((

Christmas isn’t really a very big thing in Japan, not in the way it is in the West but she remembers trees and presents, stacks of bento boxes, and going to the shrine with her parents for the New Years all bundled up. Growing up with Stacker-sensei she remembers more of the same, Christmas was one of the few holidays he loved because he and his sister always spent it together and the traditions carried on when he adopted her. Trees and presents and trips to the shrines for the years they lived in Japan. When they did, he made sure they always had their bento boxes for New Year. Gifted her new sets, when he could find them, each year on Christmas day.

Mako grew up enjoying the Christmas season. It was a time for family. 

She learns from Raleigh his memories aren’t quite like her own. The comfort she feels by the holiday season and the traditions of it (her own, her adopted ones) isn’t something he shares. He always had Yancy, though, he tells her. Shares with her. To him, they are colder memories. Not necessarily unloving, she learns, but almost detached. 25th of Decembers spent in bunkers and Ranger dorms and one or two early memories of snow and snowball fights and laughter. His more recent ones even emptier. Days on the road, cold, the wall. Her own memories aren’t grander but there is a warm undercurrent tying them all together from her mother’s gentle hands brushing her hair before they left for the temple to Stacker-sensei’s warm hands holding her up to put the star on the Christmas tree.

She wants to add Raleigh to that thread. She wants him to have something warm.

They’re still in Hong Kong as winter rolls around. The Shatterdome the main centre of PPDC now; the only Shatterdome working, even though there’s talk of building the others back up. Yes, they closed the Breach, but even as the celebration ended and the world sighed in relief there was talk that they should not be so careless with their newfound victory. They came once, Dr. Gottlieb said, they could come again. She hopes he is wrong, but she also backed him and Herc when they went to the World Council and spoke of rebuilding the Jaeger program, a precaution. A constant line of defense. 

She knows Raleigh agrees. 

That’s partly why they stay, especially if this is looking like the new main headquarters, the one where they won at. But, as winter comes in, and the sun starts setting earlier, decorations lighting the windows of the streets, Mako looks at them fondly and thinks of her family.

She leans into Raleigh’s space as they sit on their couch, her feet stretched out in front of her as he watches tv and she works on blueprints on her tablet. His fingers are playing with the coloured strands of her hair, and she turns her face to kiss his wrist.

“I’ve been thinking I want to go home for the holidays,” she says. Turning her face, she looks at him. 

He’s cocking his brow, curious, and wary. They haven’t left the city, not for real, not for anything solely for them. Maybe it’s time.

“Where’s home for you?” he asks, softly, making her smile. They are orphan children of many homes and in her heart her first instinctive answer is always Japan even though she hasn’t lived there since she was a child. 

Stacker-sensei raised her around the world, but they had a home. 

“We had a house in Hawaii,” she says, and watches as recognition bursts into his face. He seen the house in her memories. Now he knows where it is. “Even when most people left the islands, we kept the house. It’s still there. Unless...” she turns her body into him, curling her feet in, pressing herself against his side. His hand drops to curl around her neck.

“Is there a place you’d like to go?”

He shift to face her, his hand moves to curve around her hip and shakes his head, “Home was Yancy and then it wasn’t much of anything. So, no, it’s okay. Let’s go to Hawaii. Show me your traditions. I don’t think I have many left.”

Mako nods, slow, and skims her fingers against his jaw. He doesn’t shave regularly. The scruff scraps against her nails. It marks her cheeks and thighs. She doesn’t mind it. 

“Show me your home,” he says. It sounds like a plead. It feels like longing.

Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she touches their foreheads together. She doesn’t have many tradition left herself, but those she has she can share. She wants to share. 

“Okay, I will.”


End file.
